


Douglas Richardson, or walking a mile in someone's shoes

by Lothiriel84



Series: Let's Talk About Me [2]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Spoilers for Episode: Zurich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 16:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4632735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Douglas Richardson and the struggle for life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Douglas Richardson, or walking a mile in someone's shoes

**Author's Note:**

> All transcripts are courtesy of Ariane DeVere.

 

> Arthur: Oh, damn! It’s-it’s just really difficult with you. There’s-there’s nothing to make fun of.  
>  (Silence.)  
>  Arthur: What?  
>  Douglas: I’m a fifty-seven year old first officer with three ex-wives and I’m drinking sodding pineapple juice.  
>  Arthur: I know. So?  
>  Douglas: Nothing. 
> 
> -  _Uskerty_  -

The thing about Douglas Richardson is that he has built up his reputation as an unflappable sky god so carefully that you actually forget it’s nothing but a façade. He may act as if he doesn’t care, but the truth is that he does care - a lot. 

(Just like he always pretends it doesn’t hurt him that he’s not a captain anymore. He managed to pull wool over my eyes throughout the whole series, more fool me.)

First things first, let me set the record straight: Douglas is not a bad person. He may be scheming all the time - and yes, he does steal things sometimes - but I’m fairly sure that has very little to do with him being selfish or purposely hurting other people. 

Come to that, such behaviour is quite likely the equivalent of BBC Sherlock shooting at the walls out of boredom. Douglas is indeed a very smart person, just like he’s an amazing pilot - remember how good he is at flying a notoriously hard plane to fly - and he sort of gets bored if he can’t channel his good qualities into something useful. Hence the scheming, but also the constant teasing at Martin’s expense - and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Arthur’s. 

However, boredom is not Douglas’s most powerful motivator, just like it’s not Sherlock’s. Both characters are driven by this overpowering need to prove they are indeed the smartest person in the room; that they’re better than anyone else they know, while deep down they’re secretly afraid they might not live up to other people’s expectations. 

Just think about it. Douglas putting on an act for Helena’s benefit, wearing his old captain’s uniform to impress his wife - that’s not a man who thinks too highly of himself, that’s a man who’s actually terrified that his wife might walk out of their marriage if she thinks he’s anything less than terrific. 

(Which sort of happens anyway, though not for the reasons Douglas has been fearing all along. If only he had let any of his wives see the man behind the act, perhaps some of his marriages might have ended differently. Who knows.)

Then there’s the way he behaves around Carolyn and Martin. He appears to be resenting them both at first, mostly because he feels deeply wronged by his current situation. When Nigel left for whatever reason - Nigel is the name of MJN Air’s former captain, according to John Finnemore himself - Douglas naturally expected to take his place; that would have been the logical choice, and he has no way of knowing that Carolyn picking Martin over him has very little to do with his own abilities, and everything to do with the fact that Martin is so desperate to be a captain that he’s willing to do it for free. 

(I won’t dwell on the morality of that choice, because this is after all a sitcom - and I’m not entirely sure morality is a valid criterion to judge by when it comes to sitcom characters. Just like the whole ‘Arthur-losing-his-car-to-Douglas-for-a-bet’ debacle is no indication that Douglas is a bad person, but rather a random joke the author decided to throw in for some reason.)

As I said, Douglas used to resent both Carolyn and Martin at first. What changes his attitude towards each of them is discovering the truth about their respective situations: Carolyn admitting that she’s running a loss-making company because she wants people to see her as something different than ‘a little old lady’, and Martin finally confessing he’s a captain on no salary at all. At which point he becomes genuinely supportive of them, and he’s even willing to share at least part of the truth about himself - like the fact that he’s a recovered alcoholic, and that his wife has been cheating on him with another man.

That doesn’t mean he stops challenging Carolyn’s authority, or teasing Martin for being so - Martin. And yes, he does get angry at either of them from time to time; but the thing about Douglas - as John Finnemore pointed out - is that you have to remember he has an incredibly thin skin, so you’d better actively avoid calling him ‘unprofessional’, or reminding him of any of his perceived failures. 

In the end, he’s the one who’s willing to risk his lifetime savings on buying back GERTI. He may be doing it partly for his own sake, but he’s also doing it for Carolyn and Arthur - who have ultimately become his family of choice. (That’s also the reason why he sounds so incredibly supportive both of Martin’s romance, and his new career at Swiss Airways.)

That’s why he truly deserves getting to be OJS Air’s captain at last. That’s probably one of the most beautiful moments of  _Zurich_ , and quite rightly too - though I guess the dialogue that best defines Douglas as a character is the following one:

 

> Martin: Yes, but I can hardly spend the rest of my career pretending to be you.  
>  Douglas: Well, technically you’d be pretending to be Rory.  
>  Martin: Who’s Rory?  
>  Douglas: Old EOAC captain I flew with when I started out. That’s where  _I_  got it from.  
>  Martin: You mean you’ve just been imitating Rory all this time?  
>  Douglas: No, no – only the first couple of years. Then it just becomes part of who you are. That’s why you have to pick your model carefully. You, of course, have picked  _terribly_ well. 
> 
> -  _Zurich_  part 2 -

That’s the tragedy of Douglas’s life, but also its saving grace. On the one hand, having to live up with other’s people (often impossible) expectations is one of the hardest thing in life - and absolutely unfair too, because people often feel entitled to express their disappointment with someone’s life choices when said choices are none of their business in the first place. Douglas’s deep-down insecurities have probably originated from his parents’ too high expectations, as a deleted scene from St Petersburg reveals quite clearly:

 

> Martin: Don’t imagine you had that trouble with  _your_  dad.  
>  Douglas: No. He always believed I could do  _anything_.  
>  Martin: As, of course, do  _you_.  
>  Douglas: I merely go by the evidence before me.  
>  _(Martin chuckles.)_  
>  Douglas: Although that did mean he – and you’re not going to like this, Martin – but he was rather disappointed I ended up as a pilot.  
>  Martin:  _Disappointed_?  
>  Douglas: I  _told_  you you wouldn’t like it. He was a doctor, you see, and he always assumed I’d become one too.  
>  Martin: That’s  _so_  unfair. Why should he think that?  
>  Douglas: To be fair to him, I did study medicine at Oxford. I can see how the confusion may have arisen. 
> 
> \- from the  _Interview with John Finnemore_  featured in the CP box set -

On the other hand, pretending to be confident - or any other quality you wish to achieve - until it actually becomes part of who you are sounds like a very clever trick indeed. It worked wonders for Martin, if his cabin address on what is probably his first Swiss Airways flight is anything to go by; I find it works quite well for me too, though that is definitely a story for another day. 

In conclusion, to quote the ‘cinnamon roll’ meme I believe that  _looks like they could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll_  could be a rather appropriate description for Douglas Richardson. No matter that the man himself would be absolutely appalled by such a definition.


End file.
